Wasting away: 'hyperconsumption' is contagious, apparently

The 'outrageous and profoundly unethical' profligacy demonstrated by our MPs is but a symptom of a far more serious (and environmentally-devastating) disease Britain has caught: 'hyperconsumption'. So says Madeleine Bunting over at the Guardian.

Hyperconsumption, for all you Jane Eyre addicts out there, is not a rogue strain of tuberculosis affecting those Brits foolish enough to leave their windows open as climate change tightens its sweaty grip.

No, it's a profligacy bug, says Bunting - a rabid, natural resource-devouring, carbon-spewing lust for economic growth, and we're all infected, whether it's taxpayer's money, energy, carbon, weekend breaks abroad or sautéing your Kenyan green beans rather than eating them raw:

'The MPs and bankers are only the most egregious examples of a pattern of behaviour evident everywhere: what makes the SUV driver entitled to guzzle petrol? Or the frequent flyer? Or the householder whose fridge is stuffed with food miles? Or anyone whose lifestyle involves spewing out inordinate amounts of carbon?'

There is light at the end of the tunnel, however. It is not only 'perfectly possible to imagine a way of life with less material wealth that could actually be far more sustaining of human well­being' but also critical if we are 'to have any hope of making the kinds of cuts in carbon emissions to which the UK is committed', according to Professor Tim Jackson, author of the UK Sustainable Development Commission's new report 'Prosperity Without Growth'.

Many would agree with Mrs Bunting. But others, like AA Gill, would say that this is yet another example of the green movement hijacking an innocent news story and using it to further its agenda:

'How fast, after the discovery of swine flu, [green campaigners] got into print to blame factory farming and the horrid abuse of animals', he says.

'They were still burying children in Mexico when someone in a converted barn in Wales was thinking, "Great, this is a really timely scare to help out the English organic pork market." There was the hanging fact that species-shifting influenzas must be a shamanistic curse for our abusive nature. Some greens actually believe that sort of nonsense. Others just think it's useful guilt-mongering.'

Image: That's Helen Burns from Jane Eyre, who died of consumption (rather than hyperconsumption).

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